Workers need a safe working environment

The search of the global garment and sportswear industries for the lowest costs comes at a high price: the health and safety of workers. After more than a century of industrial experience and development of national regulation and international conventions, workers continue to lose their health and lives while stitching our clothes.

Occupational Health and Safety

That is why occupational health and safety (OHS) are a top priority in the struggle for better working conditions in the garment industry. This ranges from minimum standards in housing and food provision to the risk of death, serious injury and occupational diseases. Workplace exposures to toxic agents, noise and repetitive motion and structural neglect of the safety of buildings continue to cause injuries and take lives. Also are workers, the majority of which are women, vulnerable to sexual, verbal and psychological harassment and violence.

Deadly Incidents

World-wide interests in worker safety in the garment industry has grown considerably since the three workplace disasters that shook the world in 2012 and 2013: the factory fires in Ali Enterprises and Tazreen Fashions in Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2012 and especially the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013. Thousands of garment workers were killed and injured.

Bangladesh Accord

These terrible incidents have increased the public and political pressure towards creating a safe and healthy working environment. One positive step forward is the establishment of the binding in Bangladesh in the aftermath of Rana Plaza. The disasters have also shown that a corporate-led voluntary, commercial system of auditing does not do enough to ensure a safe workers' environment. Better regulation, inspection and implementation of existing legislation and conventions and binding Enforceable Brand Agreements are needed. Above all, truly sustainable safe working conditions can only be reached if workers can address these issues freely themselves, without fear of dismissal.

Make Employment Injury Insurance a Reality

Our goal is to make sure that incidents like Rana Plaza will no longer happen. But they do, and governments, brands, retailers and employers should fulfil their obligations to ensure workers receive full and fair compensation for their medical costs, loss of income, and pain and suffering. Those responsible for breaches of workers' safety should be held to account. Read more here about the need to create an employment injury insurance system.

Work towards preventive safety in Pakistan

In Pakistan, unions take the example of the Bangladesh Accord and are working to adapt it to their own national circumstances. Read more about this initiative here.

A call for change

Brands and retailers to take action to prevent OHS incidents in their supply chains through transparency and remediation of existing health issues and to pay full and fair compensation if incidents occur.

Employers to take immediate action to rectify health and safety issues and stop putting pressure on workers with unreachable production targets.